


hold the light that fixes you in time

by damagecontrol



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-18
Updated: 2015-05-18
Packaged: 2018-03-31 03:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3962122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damagecontrol/pseuds/damagecontrol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was four in the morning when Adam Parrish woke to find his tiny apartment above St. Agnus bathed in the orange glow of a streetlight outside. It was barely enough light to see by, but had still managed to rouse him from sleep.</p><p>He was nestled against the warmth of Ronan’s body in the cold dawn of the apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold the light that fixes you in time

It was four in the morning when Adam Parrish woke to find his tiny apartment above St. Agnus bathed in the orange glow of a streetlight outside. It was barely enough light to see by, but had still managed to rouse him from sleep.

He was nestled against the warmth of Ronan’s body in the cold dawn of the apartment. It was December, and every surface of the place was freezing. A week or so ago Ronan had brought heavy blankets to throw over Adam’s thin sheets. This had resulted in a mild argument that Adam wasn’t too hell bent on winning. He wouldn’t deny that he was starting to freeze every night. If anything, the extra exhaustion weighing on him would be enough to show that he wasn’t sleeping even during winter break.

"I can't afford those," Adam had protested when Ronan brought them to his apartment. "You need to take them back."

"You didn't pay for them, Parrish," Ronan snapped, holding them high above Adam's head. "Plus it's time I stop freezing my ass off when I sleep here."

Adam huffed and glared at Ronan. At the time, he didn’t like the idea of Ronan buying household things for him. It made their relationship seem so…domestic. Which in a way, it was: they slept in the same bed as often as they could manage (although it was usually Adam crawling into Ronan’s arms well after midnight due to homework), drove to school together, did homework and studied together, ate their meals together… It was all very _together_.

And Ronan was buying sheets for Adam’s bed. Their bed, he realized with a bit of shock.

Now, Adam was looking at the clock on the ground beside the mattress. 4:03. In less than three hours he would need to get up for work. Even on a Saturday he couldn't spend the morning blissfully tangled with Ronan; it set his teeth on edge. His entire life was spent in the garage or at the factory or working on trailers and he was so sick of it.

For once, he wanted a day off.

Ronan was breathing softly into Adam's neck, his arms looped around Adam's waist so they were flush together beneath the heavy blankets. Adam was turned on his side, staring at the ceiling, finding patterns in the wood of the walls. His mind was a jumbled mess of things; Cabeswater was likely to blame.

As much as he knew he needed to get up and make his little scrying bowl in the bathroom, he didn’t want to untangle himself from Ronan. They were both in their boxers and T-shirts, and Ronan’s leg was thrown over one of Adam’s and under the other, creating a sort of Ronan and Adam pretzel. It was warm, it was lazy, and it was everything Adam loved about waking in the morning.

Except that it was four in the morning and Cabeswater was growing impatient.

Reluctantly, he slipped from Ronan’s arms. It wasn’t easy: Ronan, even in sleep, became a bit of an octopus whenever Adam tried to slip out of bed. His grip always tightened and he’d mumble things like, “No, stay with me,” and “Don’t, so warm,” and Adam would stay for a few more minutes.

It was hard to leave such a sharp-edged boy in the dull side of morning.

But Cabeswater was not letting up and Adam slipped too quickly from the bed for Ronan to react. He watched Ronan’s sleeping form curl in on itself, compensating for the lack of a boy-shaped Adam.

The real and breathing boy-shaped Adam crossed the incredibly short distance from the bed to the bathroom where he prepared his makeshift scrying bowl. His head was beginning to pound and leaves were tickling at his skin. A quiet fear pinged in his chest that he would be too awake to crawl back in bed; Cabeswater was getting louder and more impatient, and it was as though he’d been shaken roughly awake.

With a resigned sigh he wrapped his long fingers around the edges of the sink and looked into the water, clearing his mind as much as he could. They were minor instructions from Cabeswater: rocks dumped haphazardly at a construction site had disrupted the line and now it was fraying like a live wire. Adam could feel the fray in his bones. It would have to be fixed tomorrow. Today. Adam was losing track of time already.

When he was finished, he left the mess in the sink. A quick glance at the clock by the bed told him it was 4:23. He hadn’t been gone for too long. His gaze drifted to Ronan sprawled out in his bed, chest rising and falling in a natural, sleep-induced rhythm. Ronan had started sleeping on Adam’s apartment floor months ago. He said it helped keep the nightmares away, and Adam didn’t mind. If he was being entirely honest, it kept his own nightmares away too.

For some time Ronan would wake Adam in the middle of the night when he was in the middle of a terrible nightmare. They didn’t happen on every night Ronan curled beside Adam’s mattress on the hardwood, but they happened on enough nights that Adam worried.

On one particular night, Ronan woke Adam with quiet sobs. Adam Parrish had never seen Ronan Lynch cry, but tonight was sharing with the former a first of many new secrets about the latter. Ronan’s sobs were racking his entire body, but his eyes remained close, his mind lost to the sharp grip of dreaming sleep. Adam watched, unsure of what to do, until Ronan started murmuring the names of their friends.

“Gansey,” Ronan said. Then, “Blue. No. No, not Adam, too.”

And it was too much. Ronan’s quiet voice was a broken thing that Adam couldn’t stand to hear. With as much strength as he could possibly muster in the middle of the night, Adam pulled at Ronan until his body was on the mattress. He was a dead weight even as his mind woke and his body slowly followed.

They were laying side-by-side, arms touching down to the sides of their hands pressed together. Ronan looked at Adam with bloodshot blue eyes full of so much pain and regret. They warred together in his eyes and begged for Adam’s forgiveness. Adam didn’t quite know what he was supposed to forgive.

“Ronan?” Adam asked in the gentlest voice he could. “Are you okay?”

A long minute passed. The two of them, very different and very similar boys, kept looking at one another. And then Ronan said, “I’m okay. I didn’t mean to wake you, Parrish.”  
“S’okay,” Adam said. His voice was hoarse from lack of use and his mouth felt cottony.

Ronan glanced down at their bodies, inches apart on the mattress, and their arms, flush together right down to their fingertips. “Oh,” he said simply. He started to roll back towards the floor.

Adam reached out and gripped his arm. “No. Stay.”

It had been enough. Ronan didn’t argue even though his eyes continued to say everything his mouth wouldn’t. He curled on the furthest edge of the mattress in an attempt to leave as much space between them as possible. It was a futile attempt; in the morning they were tangled together, a mess of boys’ limbs and mixed breaths, and though they both knew something had changed they never said it aloud.

They kept sleeping in the same bed, each night a test of boundaries. At first they kept their distance, respecting one another’s space, but one night the lines blurred and Adam scooted close to press a kiss to Ronan’s cheek. He lingered, just for a moment, but it was moment enough for Ronan to turn his head and kiss Adam on the mouth.

It was a downhill slope from there, an avalanche of pent up feelings finally set free. On nights when Adam didn’t work he would press Ronan into the bed and scrape his teeth along the pale skin of Ronan’s shoulder, his spine tingling with the thrill of the sounds that escaped from between Ronan’s lips. And on nights when Adam did work he would come home to find Ronan already sleeping in his sheets, enough space left on the mattress for Adam to slip beneath the covers and press his back against Ronan’s chest.

They kept the pace slow. It took weeks for Ronan to accept that Adam wasn’t going to change his mind, that this was real and happening and they were together. It took a few more weeks after that for Adam to consent to Ronan holding his hand in public, to chaste kisses in the BMW before school that Ronan always tried to turn into something more. It took Adam’s birthday and Ronan mumbling under his breath, as if he didn’t want Adam to hear at all, “I think I’m falling in love with you” for Adam to realize Ronan was a permanent fixture in his life, as steady as a heartbeat.

That night they pushed the final boundaries between them, their clothes strewn throughout the apartment as they kissed beneath the covers on Adam’s small mattress. It was a bit awkward at first. They didn’t entirely know what to do with their hands or how to fit their bodies, but it didn’t take too long to learn. It did, however, take a lot of coaxing on Adam’s part to ease the tension in Ronan, his body so wound with nerves because this was happening it wasn’t a dream it was real don’t mess it up that Adam had to kiss him senseless until finally he relaxed and the tension unwound and Adam could push into him.

The Ronan from that first night they’d slept together only appeared when he slept dreamlessly or was blissfully lost to all of his Adam-fueled desires. On any given waking moment, Ronan looked so much older than the boy he looked like went he slept. He was so much sharper, so full of hard edges and an arsenal of words that cut. After Kavinsky, Ronan had seemed to age by years. But now, sleeping and vulnerable, he looked like a newly-minted, innocent, eighteen-year-old boy.

It was 4:30 when Adam texted his boss with Ronan’s phone, claiming horrendous food poisoning that would keep him from work all day. It was a terrible lie and he would feel it in his income for the week, but he just wanted one day off. One. Was that too much to ask for?

Adam slipped beneath the covers again.

Ronan stirred. “Is it morning?” he mumbled into the soft pillow.

“No.” Beneath the covers, Adam grabbed for Ronan’s arm and draped it across his waist. He scooted forward until their chests were pressed together and he could kiss at the hollow of Ronan’s throat.

“Why were you up?” Ronan’s voice was a sleep-filled thing rumbling deep in his chest.

Adam buried his face in Ronan’s neck. “Just Cabeswater,” he said into warm skin.

“Do you have work this morning?” Ronan asked. He was fading into sleep again.

“No. Called out.”

Ronan hugged Adam tighter to his chest. He slipped a knee between Adam’s legs and tangled them together again. A soft laugh escaped from his lips as he said, “Couldn’t resist me could you, Parrish?”

“Shut up. Let me sleep.”

Adam fell asleep again with Ronan’s fingers trailing up and down his spine. The morning stretched on without them, hours passed and neither of them stirred, and when one of them did wake it was only to switch their positions and find new pockets of warmth in the cold morning. Sleep was easy to come by when you were both painfully exhausted and blissfully warm.

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that they woke for good. Adam showered while Ronan made fresh coffee and slathered cream cheese on two bagels. They ate silently on Adam’s bed and drank their coffee. After they were finished they kissed and kissed until the afternoon fell away to their soft touches and quiet sighs and the night enveloped them again.

It was nearly midnight when Ronan rolled over Adam to check his phone. “Shit,” he said. “Gansey called me like fifteen times.” His finger tapped at the screen of his phone. “He texted me a bunch of times, too.”

“Don’t answer them,” Adam said into his neck. He gently pushed Ronan onto his back again. “It’s still our day.”

“Our day?” There was a touch of amusement in Ronan’s voice.

Adam turned to glare at Ronan. “Yes, our day. I called in sick to work this morning, remember? It was all so he could just spend the day doing this” — he gestured at the apartment, at the rumpled bedsheets wrapped around their naked forms — “all day.”

A wicked grin spread across Ronan’s face. “What a little delinquent I’ve made of you,” he said, leaning in to kiss Adam again.

Adam knew tomorrow he would have to go back to work and Ronan would have to call Gansey and the world would keep spinning on as it did, but for this moment they were suspended in an endless time loop that existed only in Adam’s apartment and consisted only of them. For the time being, it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this awhile back but i'm really picky about what fic i publish even though i have like 20 fics at varying stages of completion in my word docs. i hope you all enjoyed. <3
> 
> (title from "turn away" by beck)


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